Today we said goodbye to our friends Roger and Viva who have been our gracious hosts for the past few days. We met Roger 6 years ago on Vanua Balavu, Fiji where he was filming a documentary about the millennium celebration and a historical recount of a friend of his family that lives on the island. We then came to visit he and his wife in Canberra later on during the same trip.

Since that visit they have started a family and now have two children, Thomas and Oliver. Thomas is a 'big' 3-1/2 years old and it was tough to keep reminding ourselves of this. He looks like he's about 6-7 and you just expect him to act and understand like one:) Oliver has just learned that he can make noise and likes it. In particular, he has learned how to shriek. It's that shriek. that makes your head turn to see if he's caught himself in a door jamb or something, but it's primarily just to get your attention. I'm sure they hope this phase will pass quickly!

Roger has built a brick pizza oven in his back yard. Yep, the whole thing! It's wood fired and includes all the details of a restaurant oven. He hasn't put the final tile work on the exterior yet, but the oven is fully functional. In fact, Saturday night he hosted a pizza party for a bunch of friends. It was great! We ate pizza and drank cold beer until late into the night. The pizza of the night was the 'El Scorcho' which was loaded with hot thai and jalapeno chili's amongst other things. He made 2 or 3 and they were devoured as fast as they came out of the oven. Apparently Aussie's don't have that 'bland food' gene that many Kiwis seem to possess.

Roger owns his own video company, Vivavision. We will add a link to his website on our homepage the next time it is updated. I was like a kid in a candy store while there. He has all kinds of cool digital 'tools' that we got to use. He also gave me a copy of the documentary he and Richard made in Fiji last time we were here. It was great to watch it and relive the celebration and excitement on the island. Val and I even made it into the credits at the end of the film. Very cool!!! Thanks guys.

We're off to Perth today and we'll be there a few days while we sort out details of our trip from there to Darwin. This is a drive that's almost like driving across the US, except it's on the left side of the road again:) Oh well ...

Keep checking back for updates on this adventure!

Eric & Val